State Secrets by Quintin Jardine

Bob Skinner series, Book 28

So, a Conservative government full of deeply unpleasant self-servers
is driving the country towards Brexit, while the Labour opposition
is failing miserably to oppose under the leadership of a principled
man with no leadership qualities whatsoever. Is this beginning to
sound in any way familiar? The book, of course, begins
with a statement that "Any resemblance to any real person is purely
coincidental." The thing is, if it didn't draw so much
of its inspiration from real events then the background would be scarcely
credible to anyone who hasn't lived through the last couple of years
of UK politics.

Bob Skinner, one-time chief constable of a Scottish police force, has
been invited to Westminster to consider whether to take up a peerage,
on offer by an opposition in the House of Lords determined to make
up for their feeble presence in the House of Commons. But Bob doesn't think
of himself as a political animal, and has many reasons to prefer to stay
in Scotland, not least the imminent arrival of a new child.

And then... hours before she is due to make a hugely important defence
statement in the House of Commons, the prime minister is found in
her office in Westminster with a letter opener driven through her
skull. Bob Skinner is asked by the head of MI5 to investigate
in the utmost secrecy, and recruits his old friend and colleague Neil
McIlhenney, now a commander in the Metropolitan Police, to help. They
have just 48 hours before the news will be released, and have to decide
whether personal or political motives drove the prime minister's
attacker: or was terrorism the cause?
Skinner and McIlhenney trawl Westminster and Whitehall for clues as
the clock ticks and the list of suspects steadily diminishes.

The highly condensed timescale in which the actions take place and
the tightly constrained geography of much of the book give it a very
"country house murder" feel. We were beginning to think "Agatha
Christie" when the author's own analysis popped up, through the mouth
of Bob Skinner talking on the phone to his daughter:
"'It's ... Holmesian,' I murmured. 'Not quite a locked-room mystery, but
near as damn it.'"

The end result is a gem of a book. It will be enjoyed by the army of
fans who for years have eagerly awaited the author's next outing for
Bob Skinner, and by anyone else who is looking for a fast-moving sharply-twisting
political thriller. Like many gems, it's not wholly free of flaws.
We stumbled slightly over the apparent supposition, needed to make
one bit work, that CCTV footage from the most sensitive parts of the
Palace of Westminster is not timestamped, but's not a big deal and besides,
the ability to induce a willing suspension of disbelief in his or
her readers is part of the art of any good author of fiction.